Originally Posted by GetawaysRus

I agree with camachinist. I also bought in 2004, and I purchased directly from Marriott.

In the early years of my ownership, trading for points was attractive. My annual maintenance fee was in the range of $750 and I could get 110K MR points every other year by paying a fee (in the range of $85-100, if I remember). You can also buy Marriott points:
https://buy.points.com/PointsPartner...EN&product=BUY
Notice that 50K points purchased costs $625. So a married couple could buy 100K points per year for $1250.

In other words, 110K points for my $750 maintenance fee + the fee for trading our usage for points looked OK. And you could get reasonable value for those points before Marriott devalued MR points by raising hotel categories.

Maintenance fees rise each year. Now my annual MF is over $1000 per year (and rising). I no longer trade timeshare usage for MR points because I no longer feel that it is a good value. I own a 2BR lockoff timeshare, and I now feel that I get better value by using the 2 timeshare weeks that this will get me.